Up in smoke

The computer in my little classroom exploded today. I was sitting with two students working on a dialogue about them meeting Brad Pitt in Hollywood when we heard two popping explosions and then saw modest plumes of soot-colored smoke shoot out from under the monitor. It looked kind of like a pyrotechnics display that had backfired; the showy blast was replaced by an anti-climactic, almost laughable few puffs from a smoke machine. Still, the three of us were rather alarmed. I told the students to get out of the room, shut the door behind us, and led them downstairs to the office.

"My computer exploded," I told Enrique, the man who is in charge of handing out room keys and buzzing people in from outside of the school gates. We went to find Felix, the guy in charge of all things technological. He was outside smoking and said he'd come upstairs to look at it when he was finished. My students and I went back upstairs to retrieve their notebook from the room so we could continue working. Opening the door we were bombarded by the smell of singed computer parts that had invaded the small room. The girls squealed and ran out; I grabbed their notebook. They girls later laughed about the look that had come over my face. "Well, obviously," I told them. "I've never seen anything like that before."